Share the Adventure: Homeschooling Phase 4.0 - E.P. Year 2 (January 2022

After finishing our Easy Peasy year in December, it was time to start working on their "regular" grade levels (which is so subjective!). We had a more robust morning time with Bible, history, and science. For independent time, Carter did 6th grade math and 5th grade language arts and reading while Calvin did 3rd grade math and 2nd grade language arts and reading (all through the Easy Peasy online curriculum).

Typical Schedule:

6:00 - 7:00ish - read and play quietly with whoever wakes up that early
7:00 - breakfast. We started following a framework for our breakfasts to give us some variety but also to remove the decision-making every day.

Monday - muffins
Tuesday - toast
Wednesday - waffles/pancakes
Thursday, Friday, Saturday - cereal/make your own
Sunday - cinnamon (usually cinnamon rolls or cinnamon bread)

7:30ish - wake up Carter
8:00ish - morning time. This includes Bible/Scripture memory time, our hymn of the month, history, science, and sometimes specials (MWF - music, art, PE/health). The little boys are welcome to join us at the table, but they have to be quiet. If they can't/don't want to be quiet, they can play together in the living room.
9:30ish - independent time. Carter goes to his bedroom to work on the laptop, while Calvin goes to my bedroom to work on the desktop. Their online work is for reading, language arts, math, and any specials/history/science that they need to finish from morning time. This is when I play and read with Cooper and Colson.
11:00ish - go outside. We try to go outside every day before noon, but it doesn't always happen.
12:30 - lunch. I used to have them fend for themselves every day, but it really goes better if I make the food for them and keep it all the same.
1:00 - Colson takes a nap; Cooper has "Cooper time" in the play room. The older boys usually have a chore and read-to-self time (Carter - 30 minutes, Calvin -25 minutes).
3:00 - snack, more outside time or free play time.

Here's a detailed peek into our first week of homeschooling using this more structured schedule.

Curriculum:

In order to finish up a year's worth of Easy Peasy online curriculum in a semester, we doubled up on the lessons. I made a checklist in their notebooks to outline the tasks for the week. We did History and Science together and then they worked on reading, math, and language arts independently.

Reading - I liked that Calvin had the option to listen to the audio since he loves doing that. One of the main things he listened to were the Tales of Peter Rabbit. Carter read some pretty challenging books (like Little Men and Pollyanna). Easy Peasy, since it's free online, incorporates books from the public domain. I like the boys reading these classics, but I don't know how much they inspired them to love reading.
Math - Math went well overall, but I didn't do a great job holding the boys accountable to their online lessons. Many times, I would assume they understood the material, but I didn't check (and often, the activities were online and didn't show any work on paper), and weeks later, I would realize that there was a gap in their understanding. This led me to re-structure the program to use the offline workbooks more often the next year.
Language Arts - This went pretty well. Again, I didn't always check their work. They liked the easy grammar pages more than the writing pages. I really want them to enjoy and excel at writing as adults, so I need to figure out a way to encourage them in their writing.
History - We did Modern History this semester (post-Civil War U.S. history). I enjoyed learning alongside them about George Washington Carver, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Helen Keller (we listened to her autobiography, which was great!). We also spent time on the Great Depression, World War I, and World War II. We read several picture books and chapter books that aligned with our history studies. After World War II, we kind of dropped off on the curriculum and just covered some of the highlights leading to the present day.
Science - We focused on Zoology, which was a lot of fun! I didn't learn much when I was in school about, for example, the differences between mammals and birds. Through videos and picture books and the E.P. curriculum, we learned about all types of animals. We spent more time on some than others. This unit of study incorporated a ton of lapbooks, which the boys got a little tired of after doing several.

Bible: For Bible time, we'd start with a hymn of the month and end with taking turns praying the Voice of the Martyrs calendar and the J.O.Y. prayer cards from Not Consumed. For our Scripture memory work, we learned the book of Jonah (more on that here), so that became our Bible reading and discussion on most days.

Co-op/CHILL

We were more involved with our co-op this semester and even made had some play dates outside of the co-op time. We were planning on joining them for a fieldtrip at Carter Caves, and I had taken Carter and Calvin there a day early to camp (in the chilly 39 degree April weather!), but they canceled because of the rain (after we were already there). Carter and Calvin also joined a book club from the co-op that met weekly on Zoom. We read Black Star of Kingston, Winged Watchman, Island of the Blue Dolphins, and Ember Falls.

In April, we joined a homeschool social group with all kinds of events to attend and a quarterly attendance requirement. We jumped right in, often attending two events a week, such as park play dates, the Bluegrass Sheepdog trials, and Field Day at the leader's farm. It was so wonderful for me to connect with other homeschooling mamas and for the boys to play with other kids.

Weekly Outside Schedule:

Just like automating our breakfasts helped so that there were fewer decisions on my part (and fewer complaints on their part), I assigned certain days of the week to different outside activities so that we wouldn't always be stuck doing the same thing. For the most part, this worked out really well:

Monday - front yard (scooters and trikes on the sidewalk, reading together, doing activities at the table or on a blanket)
Tuesday - backyard (swing set, obstacle courses, re-configuring of the many slides and tires and pallets)
Wednesday - walk (sometimes in our neighborhood, sometimes at a park where the focusing was walking the trails, not playing on the playground)
Thursday - forest (sometimes doing school work or nature journaling back there and sometimes just exploring or blazing trails)
Friday - fieldtrip (usually a park with a playground or the orchard, once it opened in May)

Outside Time

After spending 1061 hours outside in 2021, we (mostly I!) decided to participate in the challenge again. This meant we were outside almost every day, regardless of the weather.

As the weather started getting warmer, it became harder and harder to focus on schoolwork. This was prime outside time -- not too hot or too cold and the public school kids were still in school! We ended up finishing up the essentials and calling it done! We purchased memberships to Evans Orchard and the Kentucky Children's Garden, so those were two options of places to go. We also began geocaching again and found several in the prime winter/spring months before the hiding areas were overgrown.

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